The impact of Proposition 47 in Los Angeles County

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Whittier Mayor Joe Vinatieri speaks during a press conference for the Keep California Safe initiative at the Whittier Police Memorial in Whittier on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2018. The initiative is calling for reforms to some of the state measures, such as Props. 47 and 57 and AB 109. (Photo by Keith Durflinger, Whittier Daily News/SCNG)

Editor’s note: Breaking views are thoughts from individual members of the editorial board on today’s headlines.

This morning, the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs released another one of their usual attacks on Proposition 47.

As usual, their attack was riddled with falsehoods and omissions intended to make Proposition 47 seem like the cause of all of LA County’s crime problems. As a reminder: Proposition 47, approved by voters in 2014, reduced a handful of drug possession and low-level property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.

This time, though, ALADS at least had some data to go with their fearmongering. “Data made public this week from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department regarding the impact of Prop 47 in Los Angeles County is both sobering and alarming,” they began.

The report ALADS is referring to notes that since the passage of Proposition 47 in 2014, a total of 78,537 people have been arrested in LA County for Proposition 47 offenses, with a combined 152,090 arrests for Proposition 47 crimes yielding 163,610 charges.

Those are certainly big numbers, which ALADS expounds on here. A key fact ALADS doesn’t mention, but the LASD report does, is that 74 percent of Proposition 47 charges were for drug possession. By comparison, just one percent were for theft with a prior conviction. Of the rest, 14 percent were for shoplifting, 9 percent for receiving stolen property and 2 percent for theft.

Considering the vast majority of Proposition 47 arrests and charges in LA County are for drug possession, will ALADS and other opponents of Proposition 47 step up and campaign for greater investments in drug treatment and mental health services? Will they campaign for programs like Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion? Don’t count on it.

Conveniently for police unions, the more people are locked up and the more politicians buy into cop lobby fear mongering, the better. ALADS and other police unions aren’t primarily interested in reducing crime; like any public sector union, their primary interest is promoting self-serving policymaking and getting more money for their members. Period.

But back to their blog post: ALADS goes on confuse correlation with causation. ALADS notes that Part I crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, grand theft auto and arson) have increased significantly in Los Angeles County since the passage of Proposition 47, with the implication being that there’s a link between Proposition 47 and those crime increases, particularly with respect to property crimes.

In support of this claim, they point out that property crime rates fell nationwide in 2015 and 2016, while violent and property crimes increased in Los Angeles County. “While Prop 47 apologists deny any link between Prop 47 and the rising property crime rate, it is notable that during 2015 and 2016, the rest of the United States saw falling property crime rates,” ALADS writes.

Here, too, ALADS neglects to provide important context. It’s true that property crime rates decreased nationwide in 2015 and 2016. It’s also true that in California as a whole, property crime rates increased in 2015, then decreased in 2016, to the second lowest property crime rate in California state history.

This latter point, the fact that property crime rates decreased statewide but increased in Los Angeles County, reveals something obvious and inconvenient for the correlation-is-causation narrative ALADS is putting forward.

Crime is heavily driven by local factors. Even with the passage of massive criminal justice overhauls like AB109 in 2011, Proposition 36 in 2012 and Proposition 47 in 2014, property crime rates actually declined 3 percent statewide from 2010 through 2016.

California crime rates since 1985. Rape is excluded because the FBI revised the definition of rape for crime reporting purposes in 2013, so figures before and after the change aren’t comparable. Courtesy of Californians for Safety and Justice.

Further, as reported by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice last year, while 213 cities and local jurisdictions across the state reported increases in property crimes between 2010 and 2016, with an average increase of 12.8 percent, another 298 reported decreases in property crimes, with average decreases of 18.1 percent.

To ALADS’ point, Los Angeles County as a whole hasn’t been so fortunate. But CJCJ has released another analysis looking at crime trend variations within LA County itself, with the big takeaway being that: “From 2010 to 2016, roughly half of LA County’s 89 jurisdictions showed an increase in crime (53%) and half showed a decrease (47%).”

But that sort of nuance is too inconvenient for ALADS’ narrative. They’d rather pretend that any and every uptick in crime is because of Proposition 47 or any other criminal justice reform they particularly dislike on a given day, when they have little to support such a claim beyond confusing correlation with causation.

Los Angeles County and California residents shouldn’t fall for the cynical efforts of groups like ALADS to use fearmongering to undo the progress California has made away from mass incarceration and towards a more just justice system. And they certainly shouldn’t lend their signature to the so-called “Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act of 2018” which is nothing but a last ditch bid to reverse California’s progress.

While some want to drag us back to the days where locking away a disproportionate number of poor people, homeless people, minorities and mentally troubled people for petty offenses was considered perfectly acceptable, Californians should reject such efforts.

Sal Rodriguez is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. He may be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com

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